The Mag 135: Venus Has The Hots

Venus and The Sailor - Salvador Dali

Venus has the hots-

her dancing shadow passes before us.

Swishing her dress about.

The seductive danseur-

she can lure us into her orbit.

We easily feel connected

if not by want then curiosity,

brilliance in the morning

and evening-  

Even mid-day she can flaunt

in our imagination - or is it?

The Mag 135

Michael A. Wells

  

Journal Bits - Sept. 8 - Sept.14

A few items from my written journal...

• September 8, 2012 - Oh how I love to start a new journal. Empty pages to welcome me. I always promise to try and be neat about my entries but I know at some point I will disappoint myself in this regard. 
• September 8, 2012 - How many unwritten considerations/belong to the wind?//The future collect unclaimed thoughts.
• September 8, 2012 - I did not speak/for bewilderment /I did not speak/for an elevator fell/to the bottom of my stomach. 
• September 9, 2012 - "The invented person, borrowed from the real- abstracted, isolated- is the person we finally know, or feel we know. I made myself up from everything I am, or could be. For many years I was more desire than fact. When I stop becoming, That's when I worry." ~ Stephen Dunn
• September 10, 2012 - There is a relevance in numbers/you can have a bullet with each one's name/with nothing to erase the massive history.
• September 11,2012 - Feeling better these past couple of days about the Obama campaign. GOP is spending money like mad but the candidates, Romney and Ryan are making so many mistakes and their campaign handlers are really amateurish. I can hope this continues.
• September 13, 2012 - Heard in a Lionel Richie song this morning on the radio during drive time... "...people want me to be what they want me to be..."
• September 13, 2012 - You keep tabs on the important stuff/the primary colors of our life/I've always dealt with the more mundane-/the black and white...
• September 14, 2012 - from a comment in Modern Poetry class, "the how of what you say is more important then what you say..."

* NOTE:  My journal is where I record notes, quotes, observations (large and small), and poetry drafts. It ranges from junk to gems.

Confession Tuesday - What's wrong with eating your cake?

Oh hey, it’s Tuesday again – I’m off to the confessional.

We’ve been blessed with some gorgeous days this past week and I confess it has at times reminded me of San Francisco weather and I love it!  I know it won’t last.  I love the sun but not so much the heat.  I like sunny days and a bit of cool breeze. Yeah, I’m funny like that. It’s like having your cake and eating it too.

When I received an e-mail from our HR department reminding us about flu season and flu shot availability, I have to confess it brought back some anxiety on my part.  I received a flu shot last year, as I have for several years now. Being diabetic I fall into the category of people who are highly recommended to get a shot.  Still, I was hit hard by the flu only a few months after the vaccination. It was an illness that was especially rough on me. So the reminder was not a pleasant one.

I was driving tonight in our (new to us) Volvo which we recently acquired and realized for the first time that I missed the compos that is on the rearview mirror in the Mercury Sable. I confess that I never thought about it but I have depended upon it many more times then I really am consciously aware of.  I had to resort to using my Sprint navigator.  

Thant’s it for this confession, everyone have a great week!

Of Interest to Poets Around the Internet

Below are a few interesting reads on the Internet for poets and those interested in poetry- hope you find something the touches your interests.

• Letters of Interest - shares Letter to a Young Poet
• Poetry Magazine - 100 Poets for change - back for a second year 
• The Guardian - John Clare, The Poet of the Environmental Crisis - 200 Years Ago
• Washington Times - Photo of Emily Dickinson at 30?
• The Atlantic - Found Poetry from Amazon Kindle Reveal
• SF Gate - Chandler Poet finds focus after bipolar diagnosis
• NPR - Safe Landing For 'Stag's Leap'? On Sharon Olds' latest book
• The Atlantic - How Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey Wrote Her Father's Elegy
• The Christian Century -  No Poetry in Politics

Anniversary Missed~

September 2nd was the 9th anniversary of Stickpoet Super Hero.  Nine years of blogging at this site and I somehow missed the anniversary.  That's what life does for you.

In a way perhaps it is fitting that it passed without an anniversary fan fair post. I'm probably blogging less these days then I have in the past. In 2005 I had a total of 421 blog posts - a nine year annual high. The last time I exceeded 400 posts was 2007 and last year I had a total of 257. There are times when I want to so a particular post on a topic but I'm busy and days pass and so does the urge to write that particular post and I'm thinking about something else to write about altogether.

I would like to believe that as I move into the tenth year on this blog that I find topics and craft writing that is increasingly interesting and perhaps is more engaging with readers. I don't want to be just going through the motions of blogging for the sake of it.

The fact that I have blogged with less frequency is not to say I have less interest in blogs as a media. Some have suggested that Facebook and Twitter have diminished the relevancy of blogging. I disagree with this notion and believe that these two newer venues have significant places in the communication spectrum but when best used they supplement blogging rather then replace it. If you said today we must do away with two of these three forms of communication I would argue to save blogging.

I do think Facebook and Twitter have become popular for a couple of reasons. One is the narrowing focus many have on reading. To may 140 characters has become  something the can wrap their attention around. Maybe that's because of how busy we have all become but I think it also reflects a decline in the emphasis overall of reading. The other aspect is the electronic aspect of socialization that has in many respects replaced real face-to face-socialization. In this respect, blogging differs from Facebook and Twitter and underscores why I believe it remains an important means of communication.

All this is to say that I Stickpoet enters year 10 with a anticipation of continuing dialogue and information as well as sharing some personal aspects of my writing journey.  It's my hope that we will look back on this current year no matter the number - with quality first and quantity second.

Confession Tuesday

Dear Reader;

I confess that the DNC tonight was powerful stuff. Each of the speakers made this election relevent and personal.

I confess that I'm tired and going to bed.

Journal Bits from the three day weekend...

• Oh my God it's September! So hard to believe that this year has actually come to this. This month will be the stretch for the Giants run to post season.
• Lazy Saturday under the potion of stationary rain pushed here by Issac with a September chill piggybacking the storm. 
• The shadow cast dirt upon the stairs-/each time I've walked them today I've been barefoot and lax in my resolve.
• The neighbor's flag waves-/it's the most friendly gesture I've seen.
• No one much minds us-/I like it that way. The quiet/turned inside out.

The Mag 133: The Women of Summer Night

Summer Night - 1913 by Albert Bloch

They gather in secret

in the garden of delight

they leave behind 

much shame

and every other form

of constraint-  real or imagined

in the twilight of tenderness

they speak of no evil

they harbor no disdain

they are hear for each other

they are hear for themselves

they are here and this is why they come

The Mag 133

Michael A. Wells

I confess...

For the past hour I've been making a list of phrases and questions that comprise subject matter for free writes that will hopefully lead into some new poems.  When you are brainstorming in a relaxed manner that allows your mind the freedom to explore such ideas without pressure it's amazing what you can come up with.

This has been a lazy approach. The cap on my fountain pen comes off, I write a line or two, re-post the cap, few sips of a drink and something hits me again and I jot another one down. There was no certain number I was looking for or specific amount of time. I fixed something to eat during the process but at some point I thought, this has been a good start - and after some rest tonight, the second phase of some free writes will start tomorrow. 


On another note, I love it when I go back to my old journals and read through them only to find a poem draft that surprisingly I says to myself, did I write this?

Thinking about Client Eastwood the other night...

Immersed in the unexpected satirical dialogue with an empty chair, I thought why do we have elections anyway? The line between serious and funny morphed into the sad and pathetic. Poor Client, a man of major significance, with Dr. Emmett Brown hair managed in two hands full of minutes reduce himself to cognitive deficiency before millions of people, mock a sitting president at the same time he demonstrated significant disregard for facts.

The extent to which any of this was funny lies not in the lines themselves, but the fact the the convention handlers allowed this miscarriage of both fact and humor to eat up one sixth of the national TV coverage
prime hour on the mos significant night of the convention. Who was responsible and what might they have been smoking?


 

Once - Twice in August 2012

Once in a Blue Moon came twice this month!  This picture is for those like myself  under the influence  rainy skies brought to us by Isaac.

Moons have often been the subject of songs, poetry and props for movies. Sometimes I think God hung the moon in the sky for writers. A guiding light at night to write.

Nonsense~

I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities. - Dr. Seuss

Confession Tuesday - Optimist Edition

It's Tuesday for sure and that means it's time to head to the confessional.

Dear Reader:

It's been a week, a zoo trip, another mobile market trip, a few showers (very few), a handful of new e-book downloads since my last confession.

We went to the Zoo this past weekend.  I confess that walking around the zoo on a very hot days will give one a good idea just how out of shape they are. By the time we were finished for the day, we were truly done. All that was left was to poke a fork in us. I enjoyed the outing, but wow did it take a lot out of me. I always enjoy the Tigers, who were looking quite lazy all sprawled out on the rocks in their enclosure.  The most unique thing I observed was the Kangaroo with baby in pouch. Just watching her move about hurt my back.

I've journaled a lot this past week. Perhaps more then normal. I've done some writing too but I confess the poetry drafts I've developed seem to be coming from good ideas but I'm just having trouble satisfying myself with finding the right language. I can be really hard on myself at times when it comes to looking at my own work. Sometimes I think the problem is that I pick on myself too early in the process. I confess that it's hard for me to not be overtly judgmental of first or very early drafts.

Recently I've been annoyed by the amount of computer gadgets I have on my laptop.I suppose applications is the more appropriate term. I confess I can be a sucker for applications that do one thing or another. Different versions of To-Do Lists, programs that track your productivity, fancy calendar programs, clocks, alarms, if it's a bell or whistle I've probably had it. I've started divesting myself of many of these items slowly.
Some of them I've found slow down the initial start-up of my system and in particular those have been some of the first to succumb to my scrutiny.

Perhaps one of the reasons I'm looking at such time wasters is that I'm looking at the remainder of the year and I have a lot of personal expectations. I'm wanting to really maximize my efforts and get myself into a level of work that pushes the envelope. I'm looking at a window - September through December and I am hopeful that this is the best 4 months of the whole year. I confess that sometimes I can be a real optimist. Though I think sometimes the Capricorn in me is reluctant to take risks.

Help...

This may sound like a strange request but I'm looking for a few good poets. Okay, really I'm wanting really good poets - awesome poets...

I'm simply looking for a few poets that perhaps I've not had exposure to that are worthy of a read.  I'm open to suggestions. Please leave your recommendations in the comments. Thanks!

The Mag 132: Off Limits

Big Room, 1948 by Andrew Wyeth

I get the chills here;

this room so open

voluminousness of air.

Even the grand fireplace

cannot cut the impersonal 

feel.       The stark neatness,

not thing out of place.

Nothing ever happens here.

People come, look, but never sit

or stay. 

The Mag 132

Michael A. Wells

Thrall Is on My Radar and List Of Books to Read.

There is a fascinating article in the Sept/Oct issue of Poets and Writers about Natasha Tretheway by Kevin Nance. I read this article while riding in the care yesterday - something I generally find distracting and often ultimately will quit in frustration and pick up again later. Not this time.

I think what I find so inciting about Tretheway and in simultaneously this article was the depth of authenticity. As a writer Tretheway peels back the onion skin layer after layer until the stark truth resides in her own words. I am quite anxious to read her latest book of poems titled Thrall and described as ambitious.

Tretheway acknowledges it as ambitious but with as price. How many of us as writers are ready and willing to bare discomfort that such honesty exposes? I see it as the hallmark of exceptional writing; and the hurdle that every write struggles to get over. Some never, Tretheway certainly has.

Around the Internet - On Writing, Etc.

Several things I've seen here and there that should be of interest to writers and I thought I share the in a post since I've been lazy and have posted much lately. Actually that is not exactly true... I've been pretty busy and when I've had a night that I wasn't it has usually followed a day in which I have been really tired and crashed. (actually I'd like to do that now)

If you are a writer looking for a presence on the Internet then check out List of the Top Nine Word Press Themes for Writers.

Speaking of presence in the digital age for writers... Kelli Agodon has an outstanding blog post I recommend reading  that sorts out some things you might want to consider doing and some you might want to avoid in here post Social Butterfly - How To Deal With Social Media As A Writer.

Looking for a new place to submit your work - Subscribe of a routine e-mail listing of Literary Magazines.  You may find some totally new to you.

Read an Interview with Michael Nye - Managing Editor of the Missouri Review.

Check out current issue of POETSArtists.

Writers.... Don't Forget to Read!

What Successful People Do With The First Hour of Their Work Day.

There you go.... Hopefully there is something for everyone!

Confession Tuesday on the Cheep

Dear Reader:

It's been one week, three rejections, 40+ Kindle downloads and an aching back since my last confession.


Since my last confession I admit that I've come to like my Kindle. So I've counted and I have 44 eBook downloads in the past week. Of all my eBooks I've acquired, I confess that I may have only one or two I've purchased. Call me cheep, old fashion, traditionalist, or whatever you will but in have no problem paying for a real book but eBooks feel like virtual books or something. It's just hard for me to spend money for them. If it were a perfect world (admittedly my own view) you would purchase a book and receive a "real" book and an eBook file. Then when you go out into the world you could take your library with you while the real thing was still in tack ring in your own home.

For the past four weeks I've been visiting the Mobil Vegetable Market that comes every Tuesday morning into the city and parks right behind my office. I confess this has been really cool because they have had some really good stuff. Among my favorites would be the cantaloupe, blackberries and really sweet tasting Delicious apples. My wife has some things she especially likes that I pick up - avocados (yuck) and blueberries.

I love blackberries and Bing cherries.  I've enjoyed this past week snacking on both of these. I confess I could be really happy if I could just carry a container of these around everywhere to snack on as I wish.  I confess that I'm out of Bing cherries presently and I'm wishing I could pluck one into my mouth right now.

I confess that I downloaded a new book today [Four Days With Hemingway by Tom Winston] that I'd like to start reading right away but I'm in the middle of another and am trying to force myself to finish it before starting another one. I'll let you know what I think of it when I get into it.

That's it for tonight - I must confess that I'm tired and since I worked on some office work which I brought home I'm wrapping this up and going to try and unwind a bit.

The Mag 131: Detroit's Past Through The Fog

Under Windsor Bridge by Adolphe Valette

Entombed in the gritty fog

rolling under Windsor Bridge

the past hangs heavy;

smells of damp basement.

Thinking back in time I remember

how many young men crossed this bridge 

north bound to Canada 

placing themselves in a sort of purgatory

not knowing if or when they might make a return trip.

Those were dark times in America

even darker for Detroit;

smoldering nightly somewhere in the summer heat.

A big time city eating it's own young.

Cannibalizing it's inner soul. 

The decay remains evident today

in areas blackened

that have not and never will come back. 

That's what they say.

Funny thing this city, 

where peace-nicks 

flowed to Canada;

while in the heart of old Detroit

riots raged to burned out store fronts;

skeletons of Detroit made cars smoldered.

Motor city became the capital 

of civil-disobedience & of civil-unrest.

The Mag 131

Michael A. Wells 

Confession Tuesday - Kindle Edition

Tuesday has arrived... to the confessional, shall we?


Dear Reader~

I'm glad you came along. Misery loves company. Just kidding!  I don't think I have any misery to unload today but then I don't often really know how these confessions are going to go till they are over.

I am glad you did come along because every once and a while I get the impression that I'm writing to no one here. I know that is not exactly true because I confess that I do look at the site stats.  I'm not as bad as I used to be about it. Trust me, this is a good thing. You can become obsessed about such things, or so I've been told (I mean I wouldn't have any first hand knowledge of such things) by others who would know.

I am going to move for a moment from one medium (blog) to another - e-reader. I've written blog posts about them in the past and have not been especially kind to them. So, it would only be appropriate for me to confess that this weekend I got a Kindle.  Now I've had the Kindle application on my laptop and on my Blackberry. While I have used them I've never found them to be especially easy to use. I don't mean from the standpoint of technical ease but rather the matter comfort in use. My laptop for example has one of the the larger screens available on a laptop. Sitting up in bed with it to read on in the evening is not really comfortable. Trying to read from from my Blackberry isn't comfortable either. It's size makes the screen area pretty small and you have to jack up the font size so the amount of copy per page is minuscule.

I confess that I still prefer holding a real book in my hands to an e-reader but I do like my Kindle.  Yes, I confess I still have problems with the idea of paying for what seems like a file that is just born out of nowhere (cyberspace) and is there on the device. I don't get a cover with color?  Where do I have the author sign this book/ file at? 

Yes, I confess that I have discovered free books.  There may be no free lunches but there are free digital books. Of course these are not really the books on my wish list. But hey it will force me to read some pf the classics again. Okay, some of them I haven't read for the first time. I confess I still consider myself a bit of a newbie or e-reader virgin.

So while you may be reading this and think - about time, I will acknowledge that almost anyone reading this has more experience with digital books then I do. I am also interested in the process of publishing to this format. I confess that I will defer to you, the experienced digital reader for any recommendations or suggestions on how I might enhance my Kindle experience.  I mean I can't stay a virgin forever.